The Grand 0.24 Discussion Thread

[Frank_G]

I absolutely agree. .24 is by far the update that adds most to gameplay, fun and challenge. I´d never thought that contracts would have such a big impact on the gameplay.

And it gives you good amounts of funds fast enough to do the experimental and personal stuff anyway. Very nicely balanced.

[Miro Beero]

Just a couple things I don't fully understand or wish could change in Kerbal - First Contract.

1. When you have a mission to test a part. Show a picture of the part, and display if you have it researched yet. I don't know the parts by their name, I know them by their picture. I find myself hopping between the hanger and the research building just seeing if I have the part available writing stuff down on a paper.

2. The mission window is super small. Somehow allow this window to be open in every other main screen. This even includes a quick popup to be pulled up in the hanger, so I remember what I am building towards. Pen and Paper method now.

3. There should be a way to "Test" out a rocket ship before you put a Kerbal into it, but without burning your money. I find I want to play in a bit of a 'hard mode' building with cash and with real lives of Kerbals, but I find myself loading and reloading during launch so I can build a ship correctly. There should be like a "TestRocket" facility or button from the hanger where one can just test the design built. Otherwise your expected to build a rocket to get into orbit perfect the first time. (not great for newbs). I do not mind if there is no load / reload, but I just want to test out some things on the launch pad first. Otherwise I burn a lot of money for 'skunkworks' kind of work.

4. I still don't get what you do when you suddenly have no money (right at the start) when you blow up one of your ships. How do you get more money - no new contracts showed up and I had no money to do a simple mission. So I had to pick "launch to the moon" to get the pre-funding and then go for the small missions.

5. Is there a way so the no-name kerbals are in line to die first?

6. The tech tree should first start you off with satellites, and then manned missions.

=====

I find myself playing the science mode vs the contract mode mostly because of #3.

Still a great game though!

Comments?

[Kitspace]

Hello!

I suppose I have recently found a bug or a spoiled piece of code of some sort.

For now I have only observed this issue in the tutorials. After some random time into the session the game gets extremely laggy for no obvious reason and the only way to deal with it is to turn the camera something like completely the other way round no matter what was in sight when the lag started.

There was absolutely no such thing in the previous version. However that was observed in the tutorials that were not present at all in the previous version.

Hope that helps solve it.

Thank you!

[Daishi]

Hello!

I suppose I have recently found a bug or a spoiled piece of code of some sort.

For now I have only observed this issue in the tutorials. After some random time into the session the game gets extremely laggy for no obvious reason and the only way to deal with it is to turn the camera something like completely the other way round no matter what was in sight when the lag started.

There was absolutely no such thing in the previous version. However that was observed in the tutorials that were not present at all in the previous version.

Hope that helps solve it.

Thank you!

I've noticed a fair bit of slowdown in the VAB that never used to be there, as well. Troubling on a essentially stock install, where my 0.23 install had quite a few more parts and ECLSS running in the background (noted for being CPU hungry). Haven't tried 0.24 x86 yet.

[r4pt0r]

http://i.imgur.com/VZmrj1i.jpg

I don't think its a big deal. I just crashed into a mountainside with all six of these guys in a tall stack of Mk1 pods, and still managed to get into the green after fulfilling the first four "launch", "5000m altitude record", "reach space", and "orbit" contracts. Didn't give me any kind of notification though, probably because i couldn't recover the craft.

so how do you read the rep/funds bars anyway? whats the grey band mean?

[chaos_forge]

Not sure if I understand . . . what prevents you from using the revert function to test your rockets? That's what it's there for, and if you revert to the VAB/SPH, you get your money back . . .

[Miro Beero]

I kinda consider that like saving and loading.

Once I am happy with a design, its a 1 shot deal - "mun or bust".

Good point though - if you consider that "skunkworks"

[Arran]

Build an manned flight, add an probe part to it, and remove the kerbal crew, launch see how it functions, on failure let it crash, or add a good Abort sequence to it so you crew can surive. Problem #3 solved you have you're test rocket..

I allways say Revert flight as the "simulation" but now i started an Hardcore carreer, no Saves, Permadeath and NoReverting flights, FARR and Deadly Reentry, and makes me play with a complete new mindset and approach to flights..

Unmanned flights are now so all important, also is the Abort Sequence, each flight can be an gamestopper now..

So i have to approach each flight now with extreme caution, on only in this "game mode" i do feel an Test facility warrented.

On the other hand, i wanted an challenge, allways felt KSP was too much facilitated towards the New Player in mind, now i got one..

[Tery215]

If you're playing hyper-hardcore, just launch your test vessels on another save.

Yea, you can transfer vessels (blueprints).

If you are so hardcore you won't even do that, your choices are limited only by your imagination. Not by the game.

[Vedexent]

Just a couple things I don't fully understand or wish could change in Kerbal - First Contract.

1. When you have a mission to test a part. Show a picture of the part, and display if you have it researched yet. I don't know the parts by their name, I know them by their picture. I find myself hopping between the hanger and the research building just seeing if I have the part available writing stuff down on a paper.

2. The mission window is super small. Somehow allow this window to be open in every other main screen. This even includes a quick popup to be pulled up in the hanger, so I remember what I am building towards. Pen and Paper method now.

3. There should be a way to "Test" out a rocket ship before you put a Kerbal into it, but without burning your money. I find I want to play in a bit of a 'hard mode' building with cash and with real lives of Kerbals, but I find myself loading and reloading during launch so I can build a ship correctly. There should be like a "TestRocket" facility or button from the hanger where one can just test the design built. Otherwise your expected to build a rocket to get into orbit perfect the first time. (not great for newbs). I do not mind if there is no load / reload, but I just want to test out some things on the launch pad first. Otherwise I burn a lot of money for 'skunkworks' kind of work.

4. I still don't get what you do when you suddenly have no money (right at the start) when you blow up one of your ships. How do you get more money - no new contracts showed up and I had no money to do a simple mission. So I had to pick "launch to the moon" to get the pre-funding and then go for the small missions.

5. Is there a way so the no-name kerbals are in line to die first?

6. The tech tree should first start you off with satellites, and then manned missions.

=====

I find myself playing the science mode vs the contract mode mostly because of #3.

Still a great game though!

Comments?

1. A picture would help - but you automatically have any part you contract to test. Either you already have it, or you will be given a limited stock of "experimental" versions of that part to test. You won't even have a contract you can't test.

2. I'm not using pen & paper - but I agree the window is very small.

3. Kerbal Engineer Redux? It now works with 0.24. I don't consider it "cheating" since it can't fly the ship for you, just give you information. If you really want, you can just put the build engineer chip on your rocket in the VAB, and take it off just before launch.

4. Contracts give you an advance up front. They'll take it BACK (plus some ... maybe) if you FAIL in the contract (it expires and you still haven't succeeded), but they are willing to front you some cash to build new test rockets. If you've used up all the advances by "blowing up ships" ... well, don't blow up ships! Engineer should help, see #3.

5. I wish there was a way to do this too! There is a RandomCrew mod somewhere - but it doesn't work quite the way I'd like. A "crew rotation" mod would be nice. Don't forget you can always deliberately pick crew in the VAB, so you can pick some poor nobody as a test pilot.

6. I think you mean contracts? But yes - the tech tree would have to give you the Stayputnik unmanned control pod BEFORE any manned Kerbal pods. While I haven't tried, I don't think tech trees are hard to edit. Perhaps someone has - or will - mod this?

[Kerbart]

1. When you have a mission to test a part. Show a picture of the part, and display if you have it researched yet. I don't know the parts by their name, I know them by their picture. I find myself hopping between the hanger and the research building just seeing if I have the part available writing stuff down on a paper.

Great idea! Not everyone loves writing things down and VAB tripping does get old. Tip: Go to the KSP wiki and use your browser to research parts. At least you don't have to trip to the VAB, just outside KSP and then come back where you were. But this is really a good suggestion!

2. The mission window is super small. Somehow allow this window to be open in every other main screen. This even includes a quick popup to be pulled up in the hanger, so I remember what I am building towards. Pen and Paper method now.

It would be nice if the user could resize it, at least in vertical direction. Also: show Funds when in the VAB to know if what you're building is worthwhile (see point #1)

3. There should be a way to "Test" out a rocket ship before you put a Kerbal into it, but without burning your money. I find I want to play in a bit of a 'hard mode' building with cash and with real lives of Kerbals, but I find myself loading and reloading during launch so I can build a ship correctly. There should be like a "TestRocket" facility or button from the hanger where one can just test the design built. Otherwise your expected to build a rocket to get into orbit perfect the first time. (not great for newbs). I do not mind if there is no load / reload, but I just want to test out some things on the launch pad first. Otherwise I burn a lot of money for 'skunkworks' kind of work.

That requesthas been out there for a long time. Just launch it and use the revert function for that purpose. It's only "cheating" when you consider it so, and especially when you do a launch purposely to test things I wouldn't refuse reverting "because it's cheating" because, well, it was never intended as a "real" launch.

5. Is there a way so the no-name kerbals are in line to die first?

Click on the crew button in the VAB, unload the existing crew, and reload with other Kerbals. Also, launch a Mk-III capsule with Jeb, Bill and Bob, land it after a few seconds just outside the VAB and name it "Jeb's Tiki-Bar" and simply never recover it. The dudes will be hanging out at the Tiki Bar and hapless victims will have to volunteer for your missions.

6. The tech tree should first start you off with satellites, and then manned missions.

Oh boy... There's a mod for that. This has been discussed at large. Short version: if Harvester & Crew wanted KSP to be realistic, do you really think they'd stuck to little green men and Kerbin? Wouldn't an alternate Earth make more sense? It's a game, games are fun. It's more fun to send your little people into space than to send cold anonymous electronics. And you can always use the BetterThanStartingManned mod.

[Vedexent]

It's still possible to us asparagus, and retrieve some of the costs, using remote guidance control units in the liquid stages. They are full "ships" as far as KSP is considered, and can be recovered through the tracking station.

Yes - they're still more expensive than cheap SRBs, and yes, since you only get a %age of the cost back, they loss is higher.

But they might not be a completely unreasonable option in some cases.

[Russoft]

.24 has changed the way I build rockets entirely. I'm not building ridiculous contraptions anymore... or rather, I'm building less ridiculous contraptions. Some parts that I felt had little or no value suddenly are interesting because they're cheaper. I can't spam science, batteries, etc. on a rocket without considering the implications. Oh, and probes make sense now.

Excellent work, Squad.

[Marcus Helios]

A note on Contracts, Funds and Reputation: I have been taking every contract except the ones where you have to test a part flying at a certain speed at a certain altitude inside Kerbins atmosphere, So far I have built probe ships with the sole purpose of flying "suicide missions" to test a few parts before crashing back to kerbin, without parachutes. Sometimes I just fly a tiny probe ship into the water beside the launchpad to perform the "Splashdown tests" and this is basically the "grind" missions to earn massive amounts of Science and funds, I have managed to unlock half the Tech Tree without leaving kerbins SOI and without even returning half my science reports from the Mun, I've not even visited Minmus.

So basically I feel like there should be NO science reward for completing contracts, you can already earn massive amounts of Science to unlock the whole Tech Tree before you visit half the planets, and so far funds have not been an issue, not even once... and I see no reason for my rep to go down into the red ever, but I am fine with that.

Something I am unsure of is if a kerbonaught retains reputation? can he become more reputable?

I would like to see reputation increase on a kerbonaught over many missions, rewarding you for keeping him alive, but when/if he dies during a mission the loss to reputation is greater.

I would like to see the ability to dismiss Kerbonaught candidates and adding a $ cost to hiring Kerbals, and maybe loosing cash if you loose them. This way we can pick the kerbals we want from the hundreds of applicants, I personally like having a Bobgun Kerman and Nielbro Kerman in my crew!

Loving 0.24, I've even managed to install all the mods I wanted to use from 0.23.5 and some extra ones I found. I still feel some mods are so good they should be included in KSP, such as Engineer, Enhanced Navball, NavBall Docking Alignment Indicator, Distant Object Enhancement, even mods like Cool Rockets add just a little to the game that makes for a more pleasing experience. Some of the gripes I have with 0.24 are probably going to be addressed with mods, I hope...

[luizopiloto]

I resolved All 0.24 bugs and mod incompatibilities... how? reverted back to 0.23.5...will not update untill all bugs from 0.22, till 0.24 get sorted... ¬¬"

[Jade Falcon]

Firstly apologies if its already been mentioned since I haven't had time to read all the comments but is there some issue with staging on the 64bit version? There is about a 2 second delay between decoupling and being able to fire the engine of the next stage. If you try to hit space before the green light comes on it doesn't work. Is this a new intended safety feature or just a weird bug?

Edit: Ignore this. Just found it in the list of known 64bit issues.

Edited July 20, 2014 by Jade Falcon

[Superfluous J]

1. When you have a mission to test a part. Show a picture of the part, and display if you have it researched yet. I don't know the parts by their name, I know them by their picture. I find myself hopping between the hanger and the research building just seeing if I have the part available writing stuff down on a paper.

Great idea! Not everyone loves writing things down and VAB tripping does get old.

Why is everybody writing things down in Mission Control and then referring to their notes in the VAB?

Also: show Funds when in the VAB to know if what you're building is worthwhile (see point #1)

Funds ARE shown in the VAB, in the lower left corner. No pic of that, but it's the other side of the screen from the other thing you didn't see

[Rainbowtrout]

so how do you read the rep/funds bars anyway? whats the grey band mean?

The grey band is where there is no real feeling towards the space program. When it goes to the left, it's bad. When it goes to the right, it's good.

[cpast]

It's still possible to us asparagus, and retrieve some of the costs, using remote guidance control units in the liquid stages. They are full "ships" as far as KSP is considered, and can be recovered through the tracking station.

Yes - they're still more expensive than cheap SRBs, and yes, since you only get a %age of the cost back, they loss is higher.

But they might not be a completely unreasonable option in some cases.

No functional aspect of recovery depends in any way on whether something is debris or not. The only thing debris doesn't do is show the window when you recover; you can still recover it, and get funds back based on distance to KSC (you do have to do this before producing so much debris the game starts removing the old debris, but if you do it right after your mission this isn't an issue). The recovery percentage does not change between controllable craft and debris. Nor does it affect the physics sphere limitation -- all ships on rails below 22km on Kerbin are removed without mods, whether or not they have any given part on them. Even manned craft will be deleted if over 2.5km from the controlled craft and under 22km high on Kerbin.

[Marcus Helios]

Just a couple things I don't fully understand or wish could change in Kerbal - First Contract.

1. When you have a mission to test a part. Show a picture of the part, and display if you have it researched yet. I don't know the parts by their name, I know them by their picture. I find myself hopping between the hanger and the research building just seeing if I have the part available writing stuff down on a paper.

2. The mission window is super small. Somehow allow this window to be open in every other main screen. This even includes a quick popup to be pulled up in the hanger, so I remember what I am building towards. Pen and Paper method now.

3. There should be a way to "Test" out a rocket ship before you put a Kerbal into it, but without burning your money. I find I want to play in a bit of a 'hard mode' building with cash and with real lives of Kerbals, but I find myself loading and reloading during launch so I can build a ship correctly. There should be like a "TestRocket" facility or button from the hanger where one can just test the design built. Otherwise your expected to build a rocket to get into orbit perfect the first time. (not great for newbs). I do not mind if there is no load / reload, but I just want to test out some things on the launch pad first. Otherwise I burn a lot of money for 'skunkworks' kind of work.

4. I still don't get what you do when you suddenly have no money (right at the start) when you blow up one of your ships. How do you get more money - no new contracts showed up and I had no money to do a simple mission. So I had to pick "launch to the moon" to get the pre-funding and then go for the small missions.

5. Is there a way so the no-name kerbals are in line to die first?

6. The tech tree should first start you off with satellites, and then manned missions.

=====

I find myself playing the science mode vs the contract mode mostly because of #3.

Still a great game though!

Comments?

1. when you accept the mission to test a part, they give you the part to build with, no need to check if you already have it.

3. try putting a probe body on the rocket and removing the kerbals for testing.

4. possibly game over if you managed to blow up all your rockets... but I'm sure it's near impossible to end up without any way of getting funds...

5. hire some "no-names" and put them in your death rockets instead of letting the game auto fill them with Bob, Bill and Jeb.

7. this would be nice.

[neurotoxin]

So... after screwing around a bit with my settings and managing to increase my FPS quite a bit (from 25ish at KSC screen to 60) I noticed that I no longer had the right click or staging issues on the x64 build. I'm not entirely sure HOW relevant it is. I'm assuming it's some kind of Unity bug stemming from not updating user input while playing catch-up in rendering but don't listen to me as I don't really know what I'm talking about (I've only built command line and simple gui applications).

As for the framerate improvement, I was just fiddling about in my settings.cfg file and came across PLANET_FORCE_SHADER_MODEL_2_0 = False. I set that to True and massive improvement but it makes the KSC scene extremely ugly because the seams in the terrain are suddenly very apparent. YMMV.

Anyway, if anyone wants to verify that framerate effects the ability to decouple/right click it'd be much appreciated. Just drive your game into the ground framerate wise, try a couple short test flights, then try to get your fps back up over 30 and try again and let me know.

[Kamuchi]

Repost incase not seen in the other thread as I`m soooo greatful that a 64 version was released!

It did require a little debugging with mods as we`re all in update mode, but after starting a new career, I am speechless!

Trying my hand for the first time with recording as mission log instead of screenies and it looks 10 times better!

Thank you Squad for releasing the 64bit and modding community! xD

THIS is how I imagined my ksp to look when I first got it along time ago

[Franklin]

what graphic mods are you using, Kamuchi?

[Kamuchi]

what graphic mods are you using, Kamuchi?

Modlist I used for the visuals:

Texture Replacer as basis: http://tinyurl.com/kxuau79

EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements for city lights and clouds:http://tinyurl.com/optb7wa

Green Skull MEGA texture pack for backdrop and new suits:http://tinyurl.com/px4smrx

Distant Object Enhancement so planets and moons are visible:http://tinyurl.com/ph3yhef

As last install Better Atmospheres: http://tinyurl.com/kpxwkjm

High res packs and ofcourse max res in ksp settings.

Just watchout with installing as some distribute old dll`s with their mods and you will have to get the updated RealSolarSystem dll.

Just know that I`m running on a slightly better pc that it doesn`t affects my framerate even as it`s run on 1 gpu due to the lack of sli/cf support so milage will really vary depending on your pc

CPU: 3960X purring at 4.5ghz

Mem: 4x4gb G.Skill 2133mhz

GPU: 4x XFX 290X DD

SSD for games/programs [it really helps for ksp!]

Edited July 21, 2014 by Kamuchi

[matts73]

In my humble opinion, the contract system and the whole science/carrer system is not worked out. Don´t now what the target group for the game is, but for sure it´s not the people who look for a challanging game on wich you have to use your brains(maybe it´s more intended for the 12-15 jears old).

- boring missions and ilogical like "shoot this big booster for Mun and test via staging",

" test part xyz landed aon kerbin" (hey let´s make millions and the whole techtree in no time) or

"test the jet engine" if you haven´t even a landinggear, ok you could land with a parachute but how illogical is that ?

- Payment and cost - the current economy is totally unbalanced,some contracts brings you so much money without actually doing anything, for example, "collect science in orbit around kerbin ..." it does not even matter if you radio without getting a single science point out of your experiment, it gives you the full payout.

The construction costs for the spaceships are stated too low and the refund for recover are much too high, on some parts like capsule you always get the full refund even if you are hundreds of kilometers away.

Don´t now if it was intended but I had never paid the fee if a rocket crashs, even so it seem as if a mission can not fail so why are there fees ?

Maybe there was too much tequila in the gamedevelopment process but seriously - the techtree, what took the developers to put manned in front of the unmanned flight and provide the aircraft behind the rockets? And please don´t tell me to use a mod.

- Conclusion The game has become awfully simple and mainstream with the last update, .

Too bad, it was once a small pearl - now it's just a push the button and grind throu the techtree (and you don´t realy need much longer than an afternoon...)

And again please don´t tell me to use a mod or that the game is still in alpha - i know and maybe i´ll try sometimes a mod ...